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wheeze

Pronunciation: /ʍiːz/

The English word “wheeze” has 8 meanings listed here.

verb

  1. To breathe hard, and with an audible piping or whistling sound, as persons affected with asthma.
  2. To convulse with laughter; to become breathless due to intense laughing.
  3. To make a sound that resembles the sound of human wheezing.

noun

  1. A piping or whistling sound caused by difficult respiration.
  2. An ordinary whisper exaggerated so as to produce the hoarse sound known as the "stage whisper"; a forcible whisper with some admixture of tone.
  3. An ulterior scheme or plan.
  4. Something very humorous or laughable.
  5. A sound that resembles a human wheezing.

Etymology

From Middle English whesen, perhaps from Old Norse hvæsa (“to hiss”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱwes- (“to pant”).

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.